


if it doesn't kill you it will shape you

by seroquel (smallredboy)



Category: Sharp Objects (TV), Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn
Genre: Common Cold, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - C-PTSD, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Health Issues, Mother-Daughter Relationship, POV First Person, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Recovery, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27592495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/seroquel
Summary: Camille gets a cold while being cared for by the Currys; it takes her a few steps back into her recovery, but Eileen is always there with a helping hand.
Relationships: Eileen Curry & Camille Preaker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: Froday Flash Fiction Little & Monthly Specials 2020, Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 11, Ladies Bingo 2020





	if it doesn't kill you it will shape you

**Author's Note:**

> **fffc's 100th special:** wall  
>  **ladiesbingo:** Abuse (Physical or Emotional)  
>  **hurt comfort bingo:** comfort food or item / feeding someone
> 
> finished reading sharp objects and whipped this out. this book makes me insane.
> 
> enjoy!

There is something terrifying about getting sick, now with what I know.

Now that I am being babied, _parented_ by the Currys, it was only a matter of time until I fell sick with something. I avoided anything that could get me sick, out of the fear that it would cause me an episode of some sort, bring back terrible memories I had tried my hardest to bury deep down. But some things were hard to avoid. Someone sneezing next to you at the bus was hard to avoid. It was a taller, older man, grisly beard and yellowed teeth, sneezing many times throughout the trip. _Ruin_ flashed, angry, knowing that if I got sick because of this man's sneezing it would ruin everything that had happened. My scars were smart, wicked things, telling me things I knew were about to happen, reminders strewn across my body, Christmas lights of their own.

It didn't take long for me to fall sick afterward. I woke up in the morning to a horrible fever, and my first instinct was terror. I looked around, expecting Adora there, grabbing me and taking me to the bath— cold water mixed with vomit, the contents of my stomach being thrown out again and again and again. But she wasn't there. She was in prison for life for first degree murder of Marian. Marian. I let out a broken sob and looked up at the ceiling, then at the wall. The room looked like the one for a daughter the Currys didn't have— I was an awkward replacement, thirty-four years old, scars littering almost every part of my body and every part of my mind. Trying to have a daughter out of me was pointless, adopting a mentally ill alcoholic only a bad idea, a bandage on a stab wound. _Futile_ , my thigh sang over and over again. _Futile_.

I groaned and pushed my pillow against my face, trying to clear my thoughts. All I could think of was what brought me here and why I was so panicked at being sick. It wasn't like I had seen a pill or crushed anything or drugs at the Curry's place, the opposite in fact, but the nagging feeling of something being wrong played at me. The first therapist I had gone to since being hospitalized told me that complex post traumatic stress disorder often came with hypervigilance and paranoia. That was the diagnosis— _complex post traumatic stress disorder_. It was too many words, too many words I wanted to grab and hold onto tight. I had very little space left in my body, but I knew that I somehow could make _post-traumatic_ or _disorder_ fit somewhere. _Complex_ , too. I could get all of it in there, somewhere. Perhaps Adora would carve it into me like she promised she'd do with her name. They were synonyms in my head.

Eileen came into my bedroom as the clock ticked past ten, as she did whenever I stayed inside my room too late. I was an early riser, so for me to stay in there probably meant something was wrong. Usually it was just a bad day, or the urge to cut words into my body growing stronger and stronger, looking desperately for something sharp the Currys hadn't locked away yet. It was hard to find something of the sort. 

I stared at the wall, at the child appropriate wall art that hung there, plastered over the corners. A little girl reading, a tree, fairies. I wondered if they had tried really hard to conceive once upon a time, but nothing came of it, and their dream daughter's room got filled up with fantasies of what she would like over the years. It was probably that. It was like this when I came, when they offered to take care of me. 

"Camille?" she asked, hovering over the door, like waiting for some sort of invitation.

I didn't give it to her. "Hey," I said, voice raspy.

"Are you okay?"

I didn't want to admit my weakness to her. I didn't want to be sick in front of her. She had swooped in and taken the mother figure role in stride, decided to baby me, to take care of me in a way Adora never did, but maybe she would fall into the pattern, too. I wanted to not have a cold so I could pretend I was almost-normal again, that being drugged by my mother did not leave something deep and dangerous in my psyche.

"I think I'm sick," I admitted, like it was a confession to a crime.

"Oh," Eileen breathed out, and rushed toward me. I shot up like a cornered deer, hissed, and she immediately stopped on her tracks. "Camille," she said, as gently as possible, "I am not going to hurt you. I am not going to give you anything. I know it's hard to believe, but I promise you I will not give you anything."

"What did you put in my cherry juice?" I asked, desperate for an explanation. I wanted to believe I was invincible, that the only thing that could drag me into sickness was my mother making me sick. "What did you give me? What did you give me?"

"Nothing," she insisted, getting anxious, I could tell by how her voice raised in pitch. "I didn't give you anything. Please, Camille, I know this is hard for you but—"

"Don't do this to me again!" I cried out, standing up from my bed. The speed of it made me dizzy and I clung onto my nightstand. The lamp was star-shaped. "Don't do this, don't do this, I don't want to be sick, I prefer not being sick, get another child to make ill get another child to make ill get another child to—" Words flowed out of my mouth without my consent and I fell onto the floor, dry heaving, sobbing, snot falling out of my nose. I jabbed at Eileen desperately, wanting her to not do anything to me, to not stab me with a needle or shove a pill into my mouth. I was getting weaker by the moment, though, and at some point Frank came into the room and helped me get up.

I was screaming, begging them to get another child to make ill, and everything went fuzzy from there. I had gotten myself in such a state of panic that I had blacked out, and woke up to Eileen kneeling next to my bed, a bowl of soup going cold on the nightstand.

I turned to look at the wall again, stared at the fairies. _Vanish_ itched against my pajamas. Something that came with learning to get doted on was learning to not hide my entire body away from the world. I still covered it to go out, of course, but the words went unhidden when I was in bed, unlike before, where I couldn't stomach to look at them on my own. Now I could deal with them, touching the grooves of _little_ and _girl_ and _babydoll_ until my hands grew tired.

"Camille," she tried again.

"I know," I replied, staring at the wall. The fairies nearly moved, if you looked at them from different angles. "I'm... sorry for reacting that way. I got sick from... from a guy sneezing next to me at the bus. I wasn't... I know you didn't do anything." I groaned. "I feel so fucking dumb."

"Don't apologize," she said. "I understand... I understand that you are dealing with a lot of things, Camille. I do not understand them — of course I don't — but I know I have to offer you empathy. I was afraid of how you'd eventually get sick, it is winter after all, and would be afraid of us doing the same Adora did to you and your sisters. But that is not going to happen. I made you some soup, if you want it, but it's gone cold, I'm afraid."

I managed to turn to look at her, smiled a little, albeit it felt like someone was pulling my mouth up, my lips forcibly stretched. "Thank you for... for being understanding," I managed to say. "I knew it would happen eventually, too, and I knew I'd freak out, but..." A pause that stretched on forever. _Wicked, little, girl_ flared up in quick succession. "I just tried to ignore it." 

"It's alright," Eileen said. "Do you want soup? I can reheat it."

The Currys bought a microwave after I complained about there not being one. It felt like getting something expensive for Christmas, getting what I asked for Christmas instead of some shitty romance novel Adora thought would _help me get boys_ or dolls I didn't want. I had sobbed when I saw them come in with the microwave. I still don't know why it affected me so much. 

"I can take it cold," I told her, grabbing the bowl and staring down at it. It was chicken soup; it was still lukewarm against my palms, but I could tell the stew wouldn't be anywhere close to being warm enough to feel like soup. Like those filling soups Gayla gave us after lunch as a little addendum, especially when Marian was sick. The thought made me feel green on the inside. Envy or sickness, I couldn't tell. I took a long sip of it, felt it going down my throat, and then took a bite of the chicken. Eileen wasn't a good cook— the opposite, in fact. But something about the shittiness reassured me that I was far away from home, and that this wasn't Gayla's meal, syrupy and all too perfect.

"Thank you," I said softly after I finished the soup. On behalf of it being cold it didn't feel as filling and comforting as it would otherwise, but I didn't mind. "Thank you for taking care of me, Eileen." A pause. "Could you gave me something cold? I'm running a fever, I think."

"Oh jeez," she said, putting her hand on my forehead. I nearly jumped at the contact, like a scared cat, but calmed down at the feeling of her cool palm against my warmth. I sighed in relief. "Yeah, you probably have a fever. Do you mind me taking your temperature?"

Hospitals would be safer than a home, I thought briefly. Sickly people were taken care of better there than they would be with mothers pretending they were sick. But Eileen was not pretending I was sick. There were no medications, no odd tastes in the soup. Everythingg was alright. Everything would be alright.

"I don't mind," I said slowly, like it might kill me.

"Alright," she said, getting a thermometer from one of the drawers. She handed it to me, pressed it against my warm palm. "Tuck it in your armpit. I'm sure you know how it goes by now." She gave me a sad, pitying smile.

 _Little, girl_ winced at the same time, a garbled mess, both of them together. _Littlegirl_. "I do," I replied, sticking it under my armpit and pressing it against it with my forearm. I waited, me and Eileen watching each other cautiously like animals in captivity, like prey and predator seeing whether one was going to escape or if one was going to attack. It seemed to last forever, until the characteristic _beep_ of a thermometer done with its job broke the silence. I pulled it away and offered it to Eileen.

She looked at it for a few seconds. "One-hundred one degrees," she read out. "That is a fever, I think, when it's from an armpit. I'll bring you a cooling patch."

I smiled at her. I couldn't help it— it was a little girl smile, of one that was babied for far too long, a spoiled brat getting away with everything she wanted. It wasn't what I was, but it was what I wanted to become now that I was under the Currys' wing. "Thank you, mom," I said slowly, savoring the word in my lips. I didn't quite ever call Adora mom. The word remained untainted, curling against my back, like it should be placed there.

Eileen's eyes widened for a second, taking the name in, and then she smiled. "Of course, Camille," she said. She pecked me on the cheek and went to retrieve the patch, dutifully kept in the freezer for whenever someone was having a fever, which apparently Frank was a frequent dealer in.

She helped me lay down and pressed the patch against my warm skin. "This is just a cold, I believe, but if it's the flu we'll deal with it, okay?"

"Okay," I said. Littlegirl, my skin sang again, in a pleasant manner. I was a little girl right there. "Could you bring me more soup?"

Eileen nodded eagerly. "Of course," she said. "I didn't think you'd like it."

I went for honesty— "I don't. But it's nice to get cared for like that anyway."

Eileen laughed, airy and curious, and looked at me in a way I could only describe as loving. "Do you want me to add something, take something out?"

"No," I said, a bit too fast for my taste. "I— I like that it's bad, really. If it was perfect it would've made me think of Gayla. Her food was always perfect."

"Alright," she said, nodding. "She's Adora's helper?"

"Yes." A pause. "Everything. She cooks, she cleans, whatever it is. I don't know what she's doing now that Adora's in prison. Probably just... cooking in the house, as always." I sighed. "Anyway. Yes, some soup would be really good."

Eileen leaned in to hug me, just a quick conjunction of my body and hers. Her forearm pressed briefly against one of the many words spread across my body. She didn't flinch or move in any way that told me she had felt the creases of the skin, but I knew she had.

She accepted me just as I was. Something about that made my eyes water, my throat itch. I nodded again. "Some soup would be good."

"I'll go get some," she told me, and left.

 _Little girl_ , my skin sang again, and I touched it as Eileen left, the raised skin on my calf calling me a little girl, separated by another word in between them. It was enough for me, that reassurance that I was still a little girl, ready to be mothered. I had never gotten such a mothering before.

I sighed out and looked at the wall. The fairies smiled at me, and I managed to smile back.


End file.
